You put a lot of effort into building a website, but it's time down the drain unless the site ultimately connects with people. In this series, Aarron Walter teaches easy techniques for getting the attention of both search engines and users.

From the author of

From the author of

Whether you’re a professional in the web design industry or an
independent, building sites for yourself, everyone publishing on the Web has the
same goal in mind: We want the things we plan, design, and build to connect
with people. But, in reality, we probably find ourselves diligently working
with noses down, paying little attention to how we’ll make those
connections.

Findability—the discipline that helps users to find and
reconnect with the things they seek—is all about building connections with
your audience. Through findability, you can help users to do three things:

Discover your website.

Find the content they seek inside your website.

Rediscover your content later on.

The way that you build your sites greatly influences the findability of your
content. If you’ve ever taken a speech class or gotten in a heated
discussion, you’ve learned that the way you communicate is just as
important as what you’re saying (sometimes even more important). That rule
is also true when communicating on the Web. The markup you use to deliver your
online messages can affect how well a search engine can index and discern
meaning in your content. Markup can even make content portable, so that when
your audience discovers it they can move it with a single click to a location
where it’ll be easy to find again.

The Connection Between Web Standards and Findability

Following
web standards
best practices is a big part of building findable content. Web standards and
findability complement each other perfectly. Many of the best practices that
standards encourage also help to ensure that your content is accessible and
meaningful to search engine spiders.

The bridge between standards and findability is broad, with five key
connections: